PROVO — While his peers purchased textbooks and studied their class schedules for another fall semester, BYU senior Dane Brock said a prayer of thanks that he still had a right leg to take with him to classes next year.
In fact, for the 24-year-old who nearly died three weeks ago when he was run over by a boat while swimming, each new day is worth celebrating.
"They thought I was going to die, then they thought I was going to lose my leg, then they thought I wouldn't walk," Brock said. "But I'm going to walk, I'm not going to die, not going to lose my leg. So besides the boat hitting me, everything has gone as good as it can go."
Brock's optimism and faith kicked in just seconds after he realized he'd been hit by a boat while vacationing at western Maryland's Deep Creek Lake on Aug. 27.
He'd been swimming hard near the edge of the safe-swim zone and between splashing and breathing never heard the roar of the motor. The impact from the propeller shoved him under the water and as he floated to the bloodied surface, he knew he needed immediate help.
"I don't think they knew how serious it was, they just kept apologizing," he said of the boaters. "I told them I appreciated them apologizing but they needed to get me in the boat or I was going to drown."
His wife, Rachel, had watched the crash from the beach and frantically directed her family to call 911.
"Maybe he just got knocked out ... or maybe I just became a widow," she said of her initial thoughts. "It really changes your perspective with how you interact with your husband knowing things can change that fast."
Amid the panic, Rachel Brock said she was immediately comforted by the fact that they'd been married in the LDS temple just a year and a month before, "and if the worst had happened, I'd be able to see him again," she said.
When the boaters finally brought him to the dock, Brock said his vision became blurry and he began to think about the next life.
"Then I thought about my wife, and I decided to live," he said. "I know it sounds crazy, but I kind of had a choice. I'll fight for it."
And with that, he said his vision cleared and the pain increased.
An hour later he was in the operating room of West Virginia University's Jon Michael Moore Trauma Center and his mother, Disa Brock, was scrambling to book a cross-country flight from Idaho.
When she finally saw her bruised and battered oldest child of six, his first halting words were: "Mom, you'll be proud of me, I've had faith the whole time."
Then he asked his mom and his wife if they had said a prayer of thanks.
"We both started crying," Disa Brock said. "He (could) barely speak but he said the prayer and we cried."
The propeller had ripped through Brock's abdomen and leg, breaking the top of his femur and slicing his thigh from the inside middle around to the top of his glutes.
Doctors saved his colon, he can still wiggle his toes and he's had zero infections despite a contaminated wound. His family chalks up the many miracles to the hundreds of prayers from family and friends around the world. Even LDS missionaries in Denmark are praying for Brock; he was their Danish teacher in the LDS Church's Missionary Training Center.
Those prayers are doing more than just healing physical wounds, they're keeping the couple positive, he said.
"Even when I was under the water... I just knew that this is going to be a trial that I'll need to go through," Brock said. "I've never seriously had anything hard in my life and I just thought, 'It's going to be OK, I can go through something hard.'"
School is on hold now for media-music major Brock and senior-accounting student Rachel. Instead of studying together in the library, they're reading in a hospital room, preparing for minor surgeries or walking slowly through sterile halls with Brock on crutches. Each night they pray together and remember how lucky they are.
"He's the best person I know," Rachel Brock says resolutely. "He might be embarrassed that I'd say that … but he's the most selfless, faithful person I know. He has the best attitude. It's … made it easier on all of us because he is so positive about everything."
EMAIL: sisraelsen@desnews.com
Listen to Dane Brock's band: www.reverbnation.com/thebrock